Lots and lots of beautiful writing. Lots. And while I enjoyed the beauty of the language, very little actually moved me. I think this is in part because the narratives of individual people or creatures are ephemeral to the story of the land itself--they become, to a certain extent, meaningless. Many of the stories would have been compelling had not the slow, inexorable description of the land and plants been in the foreground. And perhaps that' s deliberate, and that this is a book that reminds us that one day humans will have been but a blip in the geologic record.

This one is a bit tricky to review because I want others to have the same experience that I had while reading, so don’t want to give anything away. The best way to go into it, I think, is blind, other than to say, it’s so much more than just a historical fiction about generations living on the same plot of land. So much more than that.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the advanced copy!

"North Woods" is an incredible novel spanning nearly 400 years, centering on the intricacies of life within one New England home. It is a multi-generic, lyrical novel, which at time can make it difficult to center ones self as a reader. However, Mason manages to pull together different voices and POVs, both human and non-human, that weave together to create an enchanting story that pulled me and didn't let me go until the final page. The apple-obsessed Osgoods, the beetles in the elm, and the founding Puritan couple remain some of my favorite storylines within the novel. Yet Mason does not allow the reader to forget one single inhabitant of the home, managing to call the reader back to past inhabitants through the whisper of an object or an image.
"North Woods" is not a novel to be devoured in a day. The writing and images it presents are meant to be savored, considered, and mulled over. This novel was a breath-taking consideration of what it means to be home, and how that home might change depending on who claims it.

First there was a perfect plot of land at the edge of a forest to create a home. Then, nature had its way and the land and house morphed over four centuries to be the sometime backdrop, sometime catalyst in the lives of the diverse inhabitants. From a couple in love fleeing the constraints of Puritanical Massachusetts and an arranged marriage, to an escaped slave, to a retired soldier who found the perfect apple on the land and had to move his family to establish an orchard to twins to a painter to etc. the inhabitants share their world with nature, it’s plants, animals and secrets in the north woods.

Throughout the brilliantly written book, nature and man coexist. We watch the transience of man while nature, ever-changing, endures and sometimes suffers the abuses man inflicts on it. While the residents come and go, the author has fleshed out their characters so that you know their stories and their nexus to the house and land. The characters enhance the beauty of the narrative. You feel as though you are in the cabin with them experiencing their lives

There are spiritual and magical elements that are surprising and add another dimension to the reader’s experience. A crime reporter uncovers a mass grave. The book takes us on a journey of time showing the connections we have with each other and nature.

I agree with other reviewers that this book is prize worthy. Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased review

This was a very different experience. The story uses different voices representing the eras, and varies from narrative to poetry. The flora and fauna become characters across time. I very much loved the part where the young woman researcher who studied spring flowers has the opportunity to experience the recreation of bird sounds in the visually recreated forest.
The people come and go. What actually remains beyond the physical shell?
Copy provided by Net Galley

"North Woods" is a spellbinding journey through time centered on a plot of forested land in Massachusetts that begins as a refuge for a pair of lovers who've escaped their Puritan colony, and follows the many residents and visitors that eventually come to pass. Each chapter centers on a different character at a different point in time, told through various voices and mediums - sometimes first or third person, sometimes in song lyrics or poems, sometimes as speeches or a news article. Each story can be read on its own, but to think of this novel merely as an anthology of short stories doesn't do it justice.

We follow as the North Woods becomes a home for a soldier-turned-apple farmer, twin sisters who are as close in life as they are in death, a man hunting down an escaped slave from Maryland, a medium hired to investigate the spirits that haunt the house, a journalist who tries to uncover the truth behind a gruesome crime... Each one of these stories and chapters is unique and masterfully told, depicting the folly of human nature and the brevity of life. While separate, Daniel Mason throws in brief but well-meaning clues as to how these characters are connected, sometimes by blood and sometimes by pure happenstance, blurring the lines between reality and the supernatural. And while the surroundings may change, nature remains the one constant that remains to observe the passage of time and the series of events.

What makes a place a home? What if years go by, people move on, and the surroundings change? While "North Woods" may not fully answer this question, it nonetheless leaves much room for thought on the connection people have with nature and what perseveres even after we pass.

North Woods was a unique and engaging read. Fine storytelling through the land, rather than the people. Highly recommend! Only criticism is cover art, which was not reflective of book and would not have attracted me.

A new author for me. A very different style,as the main “ character” is a house and the surrounding land and what happens to it and the land over 400 years.Each chapter is almost a short story about the sequential inhabitants of the house, and I’m sure every reader will choose his / her favorite characters. They are important but the true focus of the book is nature, beautifully and almost poetically depicted in its different seasons, and the animals and insects and flora that change with each one. Nature is eternal-seasons may change, trees and flora may be ravaged but rebirth and beauty return and survive.

While I admire what the author was trying to do, in telling the story of a place, I really did not enjoy this book. I felt that all the parts did not flow together especially the verses. I can see this being the darling of readers of "literature" but I dont see it appealing to the common reader.

As I read the last pages of this book, I was overwhelmed with emotion. A sad recognition of what we humans have wrecked upon the earth, combined with a wistful hope that nature is never fully spent, never fully depleted, always ready to grab a chance at rebirth.

I had experienced the history of a place under the hands of people who loved it, a deep woods seemingly separated from the world, yet bearing the scars of civilization and environmental degradation.

It had been a haven for a couple who fled an oppressive society and the Indian captive who later sheltered there, leading to a murder which allowed an apple seed to take root. There was the man who discovers the apple tree and the apple’s miraculous experience of taste; he buys the land and propagates Osgood’s Wonder. Then, his twin daughters inherited the land and cared for it until jealousy brought more death. The woods take over, the catamount inhabiting the house, before it is discovered and claimed once again.

Generations of people come and go. One man, considered a schizophrenic, sees the ghosts of the people who came before. An amateur historian seeks evidence of a colonial murder, a young woman comes to study the flora.

Invasive species arrive and disease that claims the chestnut and beetles decimate the ash. The climate alters and Southern trees arrive, and then fire.

“Then it begins again.”

With inventive chapters that include narratives, ballads, documents and letters, following the generations who come to these woods, the story of a place is revealed as also our communal story. The runaway lovers could be our Adam and Eve, the twin sisters our Cain and Abel. We are the lovers of the land, the destroyers and murderers.

The stone house becomes a Federal home becomes a wreck becomes an improved, modern mansion, falls to neglect, becomes a commune, becomes a hunting cabin. The woods are replaced by an apple orchard and pastureland, grows wild again, is destroyed, and will be reborn.

I love this book. I loved the inventive storytelling, the passage through history, the way it broke my heart and gave me hope.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

Sometimes a book touches your interior core, rearranges it, and leaves you changed. This was such a book.
The poetry of the language, the immersion into nature, the generations of gritty stories about people living in the same New England house, the juxtaposition of nature and humans, mental illness and mental health, and present and past, all helped create an awe-inspiring tale that mirrors the history of America. We meet so many memorable characters and then meet them again through gossip, students' papers, spoken stories, and even ghosts. Nature is a star, and she, too, undergoes alterations, challenges, hard times, and renewals. I highly recommend this book which still lives within me.

I have enjoyed Daniel Mason’s work before (particularly The Winter Soldier), but in North Woods, the author takes his great literary skills to a wonderful, new, and very creative, level. On the surface this is a novel of a place and the people who inhabited the place over several centuries. The place is located in western Massachusetts and consists of a house (which undergoes many renovations and changes), an apple orchard and deep, beautiful woods. The inhabitants of the place include young lovers escaping their prohibited relationship (at the time of the early European settlers to the area); a soldier (French-Indian wars) seeking peace and an escape from a diagnosis of madness, who plants the apple orchard; the twin daughters of the soldier/orchardist whose sibling love suffocates their lives (or at least the life of one of them); a married artist struggling with his homosexuality; the caretaker of the artist; the wife of the next owner of the place, who seeks a medium to rid her of her visions/madness; their grandson, who suffers from schizophrenia; and several present-day characters. These characters are beautifully created in prose written in the different styles of the times in which the respective characters lived.
Nature is itself a character in the novel, and there are tangible descriptions of the natural world and of the animals who also inhabit the location. There are tangible descriptions of insects, birds and trees – and each plays its own role in the habitation of the location. The ongoing presence of the mountain lion and the poetry related to the lion are outstandingly presented.
Woven throughout the novel is the issue of mental health – or “madness”. The reader watches as, throughout the years and (some!) community changes in attitude, many of the characters grapple with their mental health/emotional issues and needs. Mason is a professor of clinical psychology. His ability to turn his medical knowledge into the incredible artwork that is this novel is amazing.
Without giving away the incredible ending, I will just say that this novel presents the full circle of the history of a place and its inhabitants, human and animal/insect. If you want a beautiful, complex, highly creative and well-written novel, I recommend this one.

4.5, rounded up. This was an immensely pleasurable reading experience, and highly recommended (unfortunately, it's not scheduled for publication in the US until September).

Mason's previous books (most recently, his novel The Winter Soldier and short-story collection A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth) have been intimate chamber pieces. In North Woods, he's working on a grander, symphonic scale, with a hugely ambitious goal: the story of a house deep in the woods of Western Massachusetts over 400 tumultuous years of history, accumulating a series of violent revenge tragedies.

Generations of bodies pile up into a layered mass grave: two young lovers elope from a Puritan colony into the forest, an English veteran of the Revolutionary War plants an apple orchard, two spinster sisters keep suitors at bay, a repressed married gay novelist pines for an equally repressed painter. Their ghosts haunt the house in a more than metaphorical way, and the living are locked into a tight embrace with the dead. Natural cycles mesh with the rise and fall of the families of those who think they own this spot of land, and historical cycles of boom and bust.

North Woods is a richly polyvocal novel: Mason alternates numbered chapters in third-person omniscient narration with chapters in an intriguingly diverse range of textual genres, including popular ballads, letter exchanges, lyric poems, diary entries, real-estate listings, and noirish pulp. Even an elm-borer beetle is the protagonist of one chapter, and a catamount sporadically stalks the grounds. And the woods themselves are a deeply-drawn character, teeming with life and bursting with four seasons of color.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

I approached this book with genuine dedication, but to put it simply, it left me perplexed. From the very beginning, the novel ventured into peculiar territory. Essentially, the book compromises of different stories told across various points in time that are centered around a house in the "North Woods".

I struggled to articulate what exactly transpired in that initial chapter. The writing style was excessively ornate, resembling a stream of consciousness. However, after the first chapter, I noticed an improvement, or at least a shift that made the writing more accessible to my personal taste. Undoubtedly, there will be readers who adore this style of writing. I can envision Mason's prose receiving great acclaim within certain literary circles. For me, though, the author's writing reminded me too much of mandatory school reading. I found myself transported back to a classroom, engaged in discussions about the chapters. By the fourth chapter, it became apparent that I was not the intended audience for this book.

I yearned for a stronger narrative thread to weave through the different chapters and stories, beyond the recurring motifs of the house and the apples. The majority of chapters felt disconnected from one another, almost as if they were penned by different authors. Nevertheless, this disjointedness highlights the author's talent for employing diverse styles, allowing each chapter to possess a distinct identity.

In conclusion, this book failed to resonate with me personally, but I can envision other readers thoroughly enjoying this novel. I extend my gratitude to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for providing me with this advanced copy.

Overall rating: ⭐️⭐️
Enjoyment: ⭐️
Plot: ⭐️⭐️
Characters: ⭐️
Thought Provoking: ⭐️⭐️
Ease of Reading: ⭐️.✨
World Building: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Writing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.✨

DNF: Stopped reading at 176 out of 287 pages. Although my ARC copy from NetGalley was listed as 287 pages, the page length differed from what was indicated on Story Graph/Goodreads, despite having the same ISBN number.

The story of a house in the woods and its many inhabitants over the years.
Beautifully written and ephemeral it is almost dreamlike in its content.

North Woods is billed as the story of a house through the ages, and Daniel Mason tells this tale through interconnected stories about each of its inhabitants. It begins when a pair of young lovers run away from a Puritan colony and build the cabin, and over time it is inhabited by a soldier, an orchardist, a crime reporter, a painter, and several others. One of the drawbacks of this approach is that just about the time I was getting immersed in one chapter, it seemed to be over and a new one started, but that is no different from reading a collection of short stories. I found some stories to be more interesting than others, but this is also true of short stories. The language is beautiful, rich, and distinctive, but it is also dense and heavy, at times bordering on impenetrable. The story isn't propelled forward by continuing characters nor is it plot-driven, but the imagery is superb. What I enjoyed most is how history and the legacy of the inhabitants of the house were conveyed.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. This book will be published on September 19, 2023.

When reading this novel you learn of things in the woods that will be helpful in your life. The things that grow in the woods, the animals that live there and how the people survive and live there. The man that lives in the woods was a painter. So having nature so close by to have many of natures wonders to paint.

Thanks you to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me a copy of this book in return for my honest opinions.

Cute book. Quick read. Not a book I would pick up on my own

Fot stars Recommend

North Woods is described as "A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries," and that is indeed the case. The stories and imagery are vivid, I felt as though I were there smelling the scents and viewing the scene, partaking in the story and location.

Historically, New England has been home to many talented authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Frost. As a New Englander, I loved how North Woods stories evolved, echoing the styles reminiscent of New England writers through time. Several stories reminded me of Thoreau's love of nature and the Concord woods.

Highly recommended to fans of New England writers or those who enjoy novels with a focus on nature.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing an advance copy to review.

Author Daniel Mason had a real inspiration while writing NORTH WOODS, namely to follow a single structure through time and its varied inhabitants’ experiences while living there. The idea itself is wonderful and Mason is an excellent writer. His ability to bring characters to life and animate his settings and eras is exceptional. There were chapters in the book that made my own setting disappear and his descriptions feel more real than my own. Unfortunately, not all of his chapters are equally compelling and some really drag the book down. There were times I wished to skip ahead and just move on. But, all in all, this is a genius of a book and well worth reading. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.